Seiler: How Vito got away with it

CASEY SEILER

Updated 10:35 pm, Saturday, May 18, 2013

In a more forthright legislative environment, someone in the state Assembly would introduce a resolution honoring Rob Ford, the increasingly erratic mayor of Toronto.

On Friday, Canada's media was aflame with reports that Ford — who bears a striking resemblance to the late comedian Chris Farley — had been caught on cellphone video smoking crack with a clutch of Somali immigrant drug dealers.

I'm not suggesting that anyone would want to honor Ford for his alleged crack use, or even for reaching out to his city's immigrant community in a novel way. But surely we owe him a debt for allowing New York a few sweet hours of respite from the notoriety that comes with harboring North America's most odious elected official.

That would be Vito Lopez, the Brooklyn assemblyman and former Democratic power broker whose excessively hands-on management style was the subject of a report from the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics that left even the most hardened journalists feeling in need of a spiritual delousing.

I won't waste time on an inventory of his alleged mistreatment of female staffers — demands for massages, unwanted touching and other creepy sexual overtures — except to note that Lopez's defense makes extensive use of fawning text messages sent to him by the female aides who later accused him of inappropriate behavior.

Lopez's attorneys claim the messages (a representative example: "I am so grateful for everything you have done for me and feel so honored and excited that you are a part of my life") prove these women loved working for the lawmaker.

The JCOPE report, however, concludes that Lopez insisted on these communications from the women who had caught his interest, and that he coached them in how to satisfy his digital desires. He even composed a handwritten suggestion of what he needed: "Vito, I wanted to be nice to you. Hope you like the way I look."

That's a neat trick, in a diabolical kind of way: simultaneously getting your jollies and building your alibi.

But Lopez isn't the only one who faces blame. An accompanying report by Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan said the decision by Speaker Sheldon Silver's office to secretly settle claims with two Lopez complainants without alerting the Assembly ethics committee "apparently encouraged (Lopez) to continue the inappropriate conduct."

Does this put Silver in the company of Penn State's Joe Paterno and the innumerable Catholic prelates who knew about the sexual abuse of children but failed to do enough to stop it?

Not exactly. Lopez's behavior is disgusting, but, according to Donovan, does not involve criminal violations. (JCOPE did find substantial evidence of potential violations of Public Officers Law that could result in a monetary penalty for Lopez.)

Still, Silver's handling of the $103,000 confidential settlement recalls his poor initial response to allegations of sexual crimes brought against his former counsel Michael Boxley a decade ago, an episode that Silver insisted he had learned from.

With his back against the wall, the speaker called for Lopez to resign or be expelled. On Friday, Lopez said he would stick it out until the June 20 end of session. The idea that the Assembly would have allowed him to remain is, of course, as bonkers as Lopez's apparent belief that young women are attracted to elderly pols who look like they've been sculpted into flesh by Charles Addams.

But Lopez did Silver a real favor by providing him with a motive to push quickly for expulsion, action that worked against the narrative of the confidential settlement. On Saturday, Lopez moved up his resignation date to Monday.

Still others deserve a portion of blame for feeding the beast. The JCOPE report includes a supporting cast that knew what was going on in Lopez's office but did nothing about it, including women who remained silent even after leaving his employ. Maybe they feared for their careers — but what about fearing for the women who were next in line?

Street crime usually has just two classes of involved parties: perpetrators and victims. Institutional crime often comes with a third: collaborators.